Giant Jet from the International Space Station - Astronomy Picture of the Day - 2024 August 13

[Ptah]

Explanation: What's that on the horizon? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early last month, astronaut Matthew Dominick saw an unusual type of lightning just beyond the Earth's edge: a gigantic jet. The powerful jet appears on the left of the featured image in red and blue. Giant jet lightning has only been known about for the past 23 years. The atmospheric jets are associated with thunderstorms and extend upwards towards Earth's ionosphere. The lower part of the frame shows the Earth at night, with Earth's thin atmosphere tinted green from airglow. City lights are visible, sometimes resolved, but usually creating diffuse white glows in intervening clouds. The top of the frame reveals distant stars in the dark night sky. The nature of gigantic jets and their possible association with other types of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) such as blue jets and red sprites remains an active topic of research.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240813.html

[AllaN01Bear]

1. ""

[chouchou]

2. The ionosphere stretches roughly 50 to 400 miles above Earth's surface, right at the edge of space.

Along with the neutral upper atmosphere, the ionosphere forms the boundary between Earth's lower atmosphere — where we live and breathe — and the vacuum of space. Another wonderful thing...our earth!

[XanaDUer2]

3. Wow